The Salmon of Wisdom

Hardy Falls

There’s a place near my home in the Okanagan that draws me, and many others, in.  It’s wonderful all year, and has a special draw in September. Hardy Falls offers something very special - an invitation to witness the wisdom of every moment having its own essential purpose.

The walk itself is pretty easy - I think about a KM of flat, accessible trail that crosses the creek with wooden footbridges. The walk is manageable enough for families with strollers, yet wild enough that you might encounter a black bear drawn by the same spectacle that brings so many there in September and early October.  

Kokanee Salmon

The spectacle?  In the fall - Kokanee salmon surge upstream in the Creek, their bodies flashing silver and red as they navigate each rapid, each pool, each seemingly impossible obstacle on their journey to spawn. Standing on those wooden bridges, watching their struggle, I find myself bursting with an urge to cheer them on - so I do!  And others do the same.  The salmon -  focus distilled to its purest form - each absorbed entirely in the current stroke, the needed leap, … current that they must navigate.

The salmon cannot see their entire route. They cannot plan for every challenge ahead. They have only this: the water they’re in right now, the rock they can actually grip, the current they must work with in this exact moment. Their whole magnificent journey happens one choice at a time, from exactly where they are - not where they think they’ll be.

Walking deeper along the creek, I pass the berry bushes that line the banks. In September, they stand quietly in their own purposeful work - no longer fruiting, but busy with the invisible tasks of autumn: sending energy down to their roots, preparing for winter’s dormancy, their leaves beginning the slow alchemy that will feed the soil. This isn’t a “post-purpose” time for them. This is their September purpose, as essential as their summer ripening was.

This is the lesson for me this September,  although there are many here.  The creek hosts many different purposes simultaneously. The salmon have their spawning purpose. The berry bushes have their root-strengthening purpose. The bears, when they come for the spent salmon, have their feeding purpose. Even the salmon’s eventual decomposition serves its own purpose - becoming nitrogen-rich nutrients that will feed these very creek-side plants.

Each moment of “now” carries its own essential work. The brief window of perfect berry ripeness in July was purposeful. The salmon’s upstream struggle in September is purposeful. The berry bush’s quiet autumn root work is equally purposeful. The bear’s feast and the resulting fertilization of the forest floor - all purposeful moments in an endless cycle of purposeful nows.

Standing at the viewing platform at the base of the Falls, I’m  pause to think about  these twinned truths - we have only this present moment, and every present moment has its own essential reason for being.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t have goals or make plans. The salmon absolutely have them!  But the execution happens entirely in the present moment. Stroke by stroke. Current by current. Choice by choice. And each of those present moments serves its purpose in the larger journey.

The Lesson

We humans often exhaust ourselves trying to control vast territories of uncertainty while overlooking the twin truths right in front of us: our actual power lives only in this moment, and this moment - whatever it contains - has its own work to do.

There’s often no  “waiting” period in nature. The berry bushes aren’t killing time between fruiting seasons - they’re doing autumn’s work. The salmon aren’t just getting through the difficult parts to reach some better moment upstream - each rapid navigated, each obstacle overcome is the journey itself. Even the quiet winter months serve their purpose in the cycle.

We miss this when we treat our current circumstances as something to endure until we reach some future moment we’ve decided will be better. What if, instead, we recognized that wherever we are right now has its own purpose, its own essential work that can only be done from exactly here?

The salmon know this. They work with the current they’re actually in, not the one they hope to find upstream. The berry bushes know it too - they don’t resist autumn’s call to send energy downward and inward. They don’t wish they were still fruiting or already blooming. They do autumn’s work in autumn’s time.

Walking back along those eight wooden bridges I carried this understanding: the world is  a overwhelmingly complex, and at the same time, - I have access to both profound simplicity and profound meaning. The simplicity is that we have only this moment. The meaning is that this moment, whatever it contains, has its own purpose that cannot be fulfilled at any other time.  The whole ecosystem pulses with this wisdom: every now matters, every now has work to do, and the work can only be done by showing up fully for the moment we’re actually in.